Blessed Oblivion. Eternal Sleep. One Blessed Oblivion for me, please and one Eternal Sleep for my sister.

Poppies… such a mixed blessing in my mind and heart. My mother’s paintings… My husband’s long-time love affair with their juice long before I met him. Deb’s leaving, forever. Sweet sleep in which my heart and mind begin to heal. Drugs that soothed Deb’s breathing. Deb’s leaving forever.

On Tuesday, when I heard Deb’s stirring and I went to help and she was so deteriorated, I feared it was my fault and I’d given her too much morphine in the night, even though it was the amount I was supposed to give her. It had to be my fault, right? It couldn’t be that she was dying. It never entered my head that she could be dying. She couldn’t be dying. Not dying. Well, sure, this was all about dying, but we’d just been to the pot four short hours before. I killed my sister.

Blessed caretaker Katy with the soothing drug of compassion, surely the morphine of the emotional world, eh, helped Deb, helped me help Deb, helped me. Told me the shocking truth, shocking even to her, she’d seen her only eight hours ago. Empowered me to call hospice. To give Deb the drugs she needed. To set the support system into busy motion. To sit in her bed and hold her in my arms.

Dying is not for sissies, I have to tell you. It is hard labor to be birthed into release. Opiates and anti-anxieties are the spinal block of this labor. You could do it naturally, but it is pretty damned torturous with release but no baby at the end. And no baby to worry that you’re damaging. Give her the damned drugs and help her breathe. Give her the drugs and help me breathe; I can’t breathe; my sister is dying. Let her go, pray her home to her kids, to her husband to her friends to her parents to a new and better place or to eternal sleep it doesn’t matter, please stop the suffering.

Looking into her beautiful eyes in those last moments, here in the room where we had sat, where all her friends had sat and shot the shit with her, looking out over her hospital bed to the view over Bloomsburg, the same view from the back window at the house where I grew up, the sweet release of joyous death, my euphoria that she made it out, she made it out, she made it over, please God/Goddess let there be an over. The poppy juice that eased her pain somehow eased my own.

Until, of course, she was gone. and then there was no easing of the pain. Now time is the poppy juice that will serve to soften the jagged edges of a shattered heart and a transformed life. But not yet, don’t soften yet. And don’t tell me it will ease, of course it will. But you don’t walk on a broken leg. I cannot function just yet with a broken heart. (My friend Peg reminded us of that in her article.) Shattered hearts leak their love and courage just as shattered vessels no longer hold water… and courage and love are required for the living of each day.

But now even sleep is no oblivion for the living, for when I sleep I hear her calling for my help and I wake and she is not there, not there, never there again. And yes, always in my heart, and perhaps even in my presence… but right now she is consumed with the work of learning to be dead and with the joy of being reunited with her beloved family, all dead. all of them. Wiped from the face of the earth in twenty years. Years that took my parents and too many dear friends. Life reshaped in a score of years. Life slowly emptied, even as Love insists on presenting new possibilities. But, still, now, not there.

I didn’t kill my sister. I did all that could be asked and tried to do more. And yet. she is still dead and I am bereft and it’s not poppy juice I want, it’s my damned sister, sitting in her chair, in her red robe, drinking her juice and doing the puzzles. And yet, I could never wish that on her. Oh.

On the upside, today it dawns on me that I’m hungry and I might want some of the funereal fruit for breakfast. There isn’t really a gaping wound in my chest and my cells urge me to life. And it’s my mother’s poppies that comfort me here in the shrine, no longer a home, that is my sister’s.

May we all find Peace. I might not find it today. And that’s just okay, because that’s what is. It is what it is, right, Lenore?

Who knew that cruise ships in Alaska had the perfect walking conditions. Plenty cool enough for a fleece and long tights, delightfully flat surfaces (well that had to be pretty much a given) and unbelievable scenery. Well, the scenery’s probably a given as well, but thanks to a wonderful break in the weather, Alaska was incredibly generous with us.

This first morning was a bit misty and so the mountains winked in and out of sight. We entered the Inside Passage just about an hour before I went for a walk. It was easy keeping up the pace when you were trying to catch another glimpse of what you’d just seen and ascertain if, in fact, it really was that beautiful. It was. It was such a feast of the senses, that now, no longer there, it’s hard to comprehend!

Where are my pics, you ask? I don’t have the kind of skill to capture that beauty… there are too many wonderful pics out there… but round and round and round… As the Navajo prayer says:

In my own experience, I find prayer a powerful tool, and certainly hospital studies bear that out. But how each of us defines prayer is different. And I’ve come to believe it is not the definition of prayer that determines its efficacy, but merely the doing of it.

Some of us may not call it prayer when we hold someone in our hearts, but I no longer believe, and I know, this is my understanding, that prayer requires a deity to receive the plea or thank you. Prayer is an action. We pray or we don’t. How you pray and how I pray will be different no matter what our religious tradition…

But I’ve also come to believe it is not only good for the one prayed for but also the one praying… my thoughts, understandings, beliefs keep evolving. In the meantime, I hold you and our precious world in my heart and I will continue to pray for all of us. Peace be with you. Peace be with us all.

Yesterday some anonymous they created mayhem in Boston. Killing three people, wounding scores of others. People are shocked and grieving. Let us be together in prayer…

There are war noises going on all over the world. There is real war going on too. I don’t know what to do about war. I don’t think strategically so I really don’t know what the country should do next. I’m not in on the desperate behind the scenes diplomatic wrangling.

Because I’m in the midst of thinking about domestic violence and how it starts and what makes it stop, I don’t know what I think about standing down, standing aside. When there’s threat (is there threat?) what do the threatened do?

And how do i make a difference? and where? Right now I have maybe three places I can put energy to try and defuse problems of violence and enmity. I think, write, and pray about peace and peacemaking every day. I’m working on Love Flows and supporting a community that was devastated, trying to be a good, supportive neighbor. In my mind, more than on paper yet, I’m beginning to think about a banishing ritual for Domestic Violence. I don’t know what that means yet, it’s all swirly and nascent. But I do know, I’m not ready to weigh in on the politics of war. All I can do is work to eliminate the frictions. What can you do? Is there something we can do together?